Can You Hold Me?
by WHATSUP
Summary: A certain Hogwarts Potions Professor has caught the eye of a Gryffindor Head Girl!! WHo could these people *be*? Well, I bet you can guess. So just what will happen when the girl decides to get the guy? I might make it R, it sorta depends on how the st
1. Default Chapter

_            Hey everyone!!  I have an author's note down at the bottom of the page so y'all don't have to read through up here.  Um, I hope you like this story, it starts off slow and sort of boring first, but it lets you see how Hermione's home life is like and how she's matured and stuff, so enjoy!!_

Hermione Granger was really, really excited.  She was in her 7th year at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and she knew that this was going to be the greatest year ever!!  It had taken her a really long time to realize that she and Ron Weasley, one of her best friends, were just not going to make it as a couple, cause she and Ron fought so much.  Love was not supposed to be arguments and fights, it was supposed to be romance and moonlight and whispers in the dark, and Ron was just not her match.  She had discovered this over the summer, while doing her homework at the beginning of the summer because she wanted to be good and get it all done, cause she was really smart.  As she was nibbling on her quill, and trying to figure out whether the Runes were similar to those on Stonehenge or not, the thought had come onto her in a big burst of thought and it was like a lightbulb had gone off!  

So she had stopped what she was doing and gone and found her owl Athena, which she had named for the goddess of wisdom when she got the pretty little white and brown owl in her fifth year when she was named a prefect which was not really a surprise but Harry had gotten her an owl as a present anyways.  And then she tied a note onto Athena and it said that she didn't think that her relationship with Ron was going to work and that she loved him like her best friend and hoped that they would always be best friends, but they couldn't be boyfriend and girlfriend anymore.  And then she told Athena to fly it out to Ron and she sat and waited for the answer to come, and she was really nervous because she had forgotten that Harry was staying at the Weasley's during the summer, like he did every summer, and she didn't want them both to be mad at her.  She didn't even want Ron to be mad at her, she still wanted him to be her friend.  Hermione was so nervous and worried that she didn't even finish the homework she was doing.

Finally, after a really long time, her little owl came flying back with a new message attached to her leg.  And Hermione nervously unraveled it and gasped when she read it.  But she was really happy.  Ron had written that he was really glad that Hermione had had the guts to tell him that she didn't think their romantic relationship was going to work, and that he had wanted to, but he was worried about her reaction.  And he said that he thought that it would be a great year next year with them just being the great friends that they had always been. Hermione was so glad that she almost laughed aloud, which would have been really bad because her mother was upstairs sleeping off her hangover from the night before.  

The last time Hermione had woken her up, she had had a really bad headache and had come storming downstairs and had almost beaten Hermione up.  She had gone around with a black eye the whole day!  Her father didn't like that his wife drank so much and he thought that his daughter was a freak, so he avoided them as much as possible.  He stayed at work as much as he could, and then when he came home he went into his study and he didn't move from there until he thought that everyone else had gone to bed, really late at night, and then he crept upstairs to the guest bedroom, since he refused to share a room with his drunkard wife.  And besides, the guest bedroom was the room furthest from 'that freak's room' as he referred to his daughter's habitation.  And so Hermione had no one that she could share her happiness with about the awkward romantic entanglement she had gotten herself into being solved so nicely.  It was just like her happiness about being Head Girl this year; she had received an owl the very first day that she was home on summer vacation, and Harry and Ron had responded enthusiastically to her letter, with warm congratulations that she knew were sincere, but it wasn't as though any one at her house had cared.  She hadn't dared share the news with her father, and even if she had, she knew she would have gotten nothing more than a snort- if she was lucky and he was in a good mood.  If not, she might have received a slap or a punch.  And it was the same with her mother, because even though her mother wasn't particularly hateful about her daughter being a 'freak', she didn't like the child to bother her.  Hermione had been a mistake, and she had caused her parents to have to marry and settle down.  Her mother had even told her once, when she was in a half drunk stupor, that it was all Hermione's fault, and she had no reason to not believe her mother.  So Hermione worked really hard at school to prove that she had at least some worth, even though her parent's didn't think so.  

Well, then Hermione went back to her homework and finished it all up, even though she had to work all late into the night.  It didn't matter, since no one was around to hear her.  No one was around to care.

_Okay, so like, this is just the prologue, really of my story, I don't know why I didn't make it one!!  There's going to be a lot of cool stuff going on in the school year, and there's gonna be romance and stuff.  I hope y'all like it!!  Please, pretty pretty please leave me a review and tell me how ya'll feel about it cause I would love to know and I promise that it will help me write more and faster and stuff.   I migh be able to even get the next chapter out tomorrow, if I write more tonight, which would be really cool, huh?  So, yeah, please review and I hope y'all liked it.  Oh, and I promise that you'll be meeting Snape soon, and it'll be really cool.   _


	2. Chapter Two

            **Okies****, here's the next chapter; hopefully it is at least a little more interesting than the first and inspires more people to review, cause that would make me really happy.  Enjoy!!**

Obviously, Hermione was really depressed.  And she stayed that way for a really long time.  She didn't eat a whole lot, because she lived really far away from the nearest store and she didn't have a license and her mother never got food, except for liquor, and her father ate out for every single meal of the day, as far as she knew.  And then the wonderful new finally arrived, well, the one other than the notice telling her that she was Head Girl.  It too was from Hogwarts!  Professor McGonagall was writing to tell her that since Harry didn't get to see Sirius very often, since he was both on the run from the Ministry AND he was busy most of the year and even the summer doing lots of stuff for Dumbledore, because the war was raging everywhere, that Dumbledore had said that they could all go and stay at Hogwarts for the last two weeks before school started.  'All' meant she and Harry and Ron and Siriuis, plus, she was assuming, some of the teachers would be there as well.  And then she read more of the letter, and found out that actually, she and the Head Boy would have to be there **three weeks early, because there was a lot of training and stuff that had to be done.  Hm, she wondered.  Who was the Head Boy this year?  She would have thought that maybe it would be Harry, but not only had Harry not said anything to her, but it probably wouldn't look very good for the school, especially at wartime, to have a Gryffindor Headmaster, Deputy Headmistress, and Head Boy and Head Girl.  So probably someone from another House.  Hermione thought about all of the guys who had been in the top of the 7th year, and other than Harry there was Terry Boot, Alfred Pennywick, another Ravenclaw, Jon Sigur, yet another Ravenclaw, Draco Malfoy (ick ick and double ick!), and Carl Calvine, a Hufflpuff.  The remaining four from Hermione's list of top ten students were female.  Still, even though she had just listed all of the guys who were really good academically, she had no idea who they would actually pick as Head Boy.  Or who they already had, she corrected herself.  This is the point at which our story really begins, and is the reason why Hermione was so excited about her 7th year, and thought that the year was going to be so great.  She was going to go to Hogwarts in a week, and she couldn't wait.  She had told her parents, but they hadn't been very interested, although her father had been a little bit exasperated at the fact that he was going to have to take some time off of his summer work schedule to drive her to the 'freak school'.  But she just brushed it off and bounced out of her room to do something that she hadn't done before because she had gotten depressed.  **

            Hermione, once she had found out that she was Head Girl, would normally have done a ton of research on it, but she hadn't since she had gotten all depressed.  So now that she wasn't depressed any more, she resumed her normal characteristics which meant; you guessed it!  A trip to the library.  Right before school had ended Hermione had realized that she was going to want access to lots more wizarding books than she could buy with the sort of small amount of money that her father was willing to spend on her, 'only so that that nosy old snoop of a freak that had come and explained that freak stuff to them didn't try anything funny with him'.  So Hermione, being the really smart girl that she is, had gotten a 'magical library card' and Madam Pince had made sure that it had Portkey capability because she couldn't use magick during the summer.  All she had to do was touch it and say her password (Peanut Butter) and it would whisk her off to the Magical Library of Britain, where she could peruse the selection of books to her heart's content.  She had only used it once since she had gotten it, but since she had finished her homework, she decided that she could start research during the week before she was going to start her duties.  After all, it would certainly help to have at least SOME idea of what she was getting herself into, she thought with a laugh.  But it was a quiet laugh, because her mother was upstairs with a hangover again.  So she didn't make any sounds as she pressed her hand to the small card that looked just like a muggle library card and said the random word that she had chosen.  

            Hermione opened her eyes and smiled as she looked around at the library.  She really liked libraries, and this huge magical one was no exception.  There were tons of tomes lining the huge panels of shelves on the walls and she itched with the need to go through them and start getting some of their knowledge.  So she started by going over to the magical card catalog and telling it what she wanted to research.  It was like a magic mirror, except that it was a card catalog and instead of telling her how pretty she was or whatever, it told her what books she might want to look at.  And then when she had that, she would find the library 'dog', which was another magically enchanted object.  The 'dog' would listen to the titles of the books and then go and fetch them, hence it's name.  Hermione used the tools to figure out what books she would want to read for research into the position of Head Girl.  She wanted to know it all; where she would be staying, and what her duties would be, and what her privileges would be, and who the girls were who had held the position in the past and what they had done with their lives.  Hermione began to flip through the thick and dusty tomes with a relish, heedless of the person lurking in a dark corner of the room, looking at her with bemusement.

**OOH, who do y'all think the mysterious stranger is?  Heehee, well I hope someone guessed right. Speaking of which, I wish more people would review!:(  No one seems to like my story very much, cause I only have one review right now; thank you very very much, by the way.  I really appreciate it!  The next chapter should start getting good, and it was really weird, cause I totally hadn't meant to go down this path yet, but there you have it.  I'm going to try to post a chapter a day, but I don't know how successful I'll be!  Bye.**


	3. Chapter Three

**Oh my gosh, like, I am soo sorry, but I got totally tied up with homework and I didn't have time to finish the chapter and post it yesterday, so here is chapter number three.  I hope that y'all don't mind.  Um, thanks so so so much to all the wonderful, incredible people who wrote me such nice things about my story, y'all made me feel really darned loved.  And to Gwendellen Snape, I tried to email you on how to load a story, but it came back, couldn't get to you, so here is how: All right, first of all, since you have an account, you need to...well, let's start at the beginning, actually. Do you have a word document or HTML file or something saved to your hard drive or disk? You need that first. Then you go and login to your FFNet profile, and then once you are in your log in menu, you click on document manager. Once you have done that, click on browse, and select the name of the document that you wish to begin your story with. If you are adding more than one, than add those as well. Next, click on the create story link, it is in the left hand pannel. Select all the things that you wish, and from there..it is pretty self explanatory, If you need any more help, feel free to email me again, also, thanks for your comments....**

**And that goes for all the rest of y'all, the last sentence I mean.  Thanks, and I hope you like it!!!  **

Hermione got really absorbed into her research and she found out a lot of stuff that was really interesting.  She found out that she had lots of special privileges, like being able to use the Floo's between rooms, that she had her own set of rooms, although she shared the suite with the Head Boy, but that didn't bother her that much, since she was sure that she wouldn't mind whichever Ravenclaw was her dorm mate.  Still, she had been rather shocked at first when she had read about the reason that the Head Boy and the Head Girl, who were assumably the smartest two students in the school, shared rooms.  Naturally, they had separate bedrooms, but they were connected and the reason that was was because when the school was built, the founders had realized that the wizarding population was going to need perpetuate its strongest genes if it was going to continue as a viable population, and so it wanted the Head Girl and Boy to…get pregnant.  Hermione had gasped aloud, shocked, when she read this, which she had luckily read as one of those last pages in the last book that she had pulled on the subject.  How interfering and odd and…scandalous that was.  She heard a low velvet chuckle just over her shoulder and suddenly realized that someone was reading just over her shoulder.  She whirled around, scared perhaps for her very life, when she discovered that it was her potions professor, Professor Snape, who was standing there and laughing at her.

            "What do you find so funny, sir?" she shot at the black clothed man.

            "Just your naïveté, my dear Miss. Granger," the Professor replied.

            "About what?" she asked him, confused. 

            "not realizing what you and the Head Boy were expected to do."

            "Expected?  They still want us to have a...a baby?" she glared at the infuriating man and waited for a reply.

            "Hardly.  If it happens, the administration will, however, certainly look the other way…but I highly doubt that anything like that will occur." He said.

             She narrowed her eye at the annoying man and asked another question that she suddenly realized he might have the answer to.  "So…Professor, you know who is Head Boy, right?  Who?  Who?" she clamored for an answer.  

            "Hush, you silly child, we are in a library after all.  And yes I do know the Head Boy is I am a Professor Of Hogwarts, after all but you are not.  You may be the Head Girl, and you may be spending three entire weeks at school early, but that does not give you the right to know classified information you silly chit."  And with that, he gave her his patented Snape Death Glare and stalked off, with a swish of his bat like robes.

            Only, something really strange had just occurred.  Hermione should have been petrified and wanting to run away from Snape after the mean look he had sent her and the fact that he had gone away with out even saying goodbye and telling her that he would see her in a week like any normal nice sane person would have.  But she didn't want to escape from him.  Oh, she was paralyzed all right, but it was with how incredibly drop dead sexy that glare was.  Smoldering obsidian eyes, and thin but perfectly shaped lips and yes maybe his hair was lank but it hadn't seemed so lank and greasy out in the light and in fact she bet that with a little bit of shampoo and care and not standing over noxious potion's fumes all day it would be quite nice and silky and smooth.  And then Hermione got goosebumps and shivers, the nice sort though, from thinking about shampooing his hair and all the stuff that was associated with that.  How twisted and weird was that?  She was getting hot thinking about cleaning her professor's hair?!?  Hermione shook herself.  She had obviously just spent way too much time in this library and she should really go home and sleep and eat.  So she turned in her books to the old wizard matron who manned the huge circular desk in the middle of the library and oversaw everything, including the exchange between the Potions Professor and his student, and then she pressed her library card and said her password Peanut Butter again and she was back in her house, in the same place where she had left from, since it acted like a reverse Portkey.  And she heard shouting and screaming immediately as soon as her ears adjusted to the sounds that were in her house.  They seemed to be coming from her parent's bedroom, but that was not much of a surprise to Hermione because it seemed obvious to her that her parents were fighting again.  On the rare times that her father was home and her mother was not out cold from a drink or too tipsy to manage to talk, which was fairly rare, and she was never completely sober, her parents fought.  And a lot of the time it was about her, each blaming the other for her abnormality and trying to figure out what they should do about her because even though her mother didn't hate her the same way that her father did she still did not like or appreciate her genius witch daughter very much at all.  Hermione was used to not having any love from her parents though, so she just walked up the stairs to her room, ignoring the mean sounds coming from her parent's room.  She went to her room and she went over her homework and then went to sleep, which was really all she could do until she went to Hogwarts in a week.


	4. Chapter Four

**Oh, my god!  I did it again!   I am really sorry about that. Its just that life has been, like, really busy for the past few days because I have this major biology test coming up tomorrow, but I still really want to get as many of these out as possible, so, like, I am going to try really really hard to post another chapter tonight, but I'm not certain how successful I will be.  So, like, please continue to review because it totally makes my day, and I want to give giant chocolate frog kisses to the spectacular people who review!!! ENJOY!!!**

The fateful day finally arrived.  It was exactly three weeks until the day that school was to start for the majority of the students and Hermione was really excited about going to her beloved school Hogwarts before almost any one else was there, even her two best friends.  So she was up bright and early and completely packed well before her father stumbled blearily out of his room and shouted at her to get ready for her freak school.  He seemed rather affronted when a chipper and bright-eyed Hermione immediately stepped out of her room with a smile on her face and all of her belongings packed into one heavy trunk which he did not help her lug down the stairs but instead smirked when she almost dropped it.  Hermione though about saying goodbye to her mother, since she would not see her until summer vacation most likely, but she had had a really late, or early, night, depending on how you looked at it, but in any case she didn't think her mother would be very receptive of farewells and Hermione was not in the mood to get something thrown at her which was often what happened when her mother was awoken when she didn't want to be.  

            So Hermione and her irritated and grouchy father left for King's Cross Station, where she would board the Hogwart's Express.  Somewhere on the train would be the Head Boy, but the train was so big that she rather doubted she would find out who the Head Boy was until she was actually at the school.  Hell, she might not even know who he was until they were both settled into the rooms late tonight.  But that was hours in the future and Hermione didn't feel like thinking so far ahead.  Instead, she reclined her car seat, much to the disapproval of her father, who glared at her and cuffed her on the side of her head, and tried to make the best of the long tense silent journey all the way to the train.  

            At last the journey was over and Hermione could not wait to get out of the car and away from her father. Usually, for the past six years, her drive to the station had been accompanied by blistering lectures about how much of a freak she was and how grateful she should be that he even deemed her good enough to pay for her schooling and clothing and put a roof over her head during the summer and all sorts of cruel bile but this time he was close lipped and not talking.  He even refused to look at her, after that one quick punch.  Hermione almost wished that he would hit her again, because then at least he would acknowledge her existence.  But when they got the place where her father usually stopped the car and got her trunk out, this time he left the motor running and told her roughly that in three minutes, her shit would have to be out of the trunk or he would be pulling away with it and she would not have stuff for school, because he would be damned if he was going to send things to her because she was too lazy to get it herself.  By the time he was through with his instructions, the most words that he had spoken to her since the beginning of the summer, practically, Hermione had her trunk on the curb.

            But her father had one more nasty surprise for her.

            "You're 18 girl.  And so you no longer need parents, and I am certainly not going to support you- or even come near you ever again.  Get the hell out of my life and I don't ever want to hear of any of your kind ever again."

            " But what about my stuff in my room at home?" Hermione protested.

            "I am going to sell it all, so you will just have to make do with what you have and this-."  Here Mr. Granger shoved a wad of bills into her hand, clearly more to assuage his guilty conscience than out of any real wish to see her provided for.

            Hermione opened her mouth to say something more, but she was quickly covered with exhaust fumes as her father pulled away from her forever at a breakneck speed.  She wanted to collapse and cry, but she knew that that was something that she could not afford to do because she had a train that was leaving in…oh SHIT, about a minute.  Hermione leaped off of her trunk which she had sunk down on and ignoring the strange looks that she was getting from the hapless muggles who saw the girl lunking along the place to get on the train with a heavy trunk grasped in her hands she raced as fast as she could which was clearly not very fast until she got to Platform 9 and ¾ where she then burst through the seemingly solid wall until she was at the depot where the train was just about to pull away.  Hermione had been very very close to getting left behind.  In fact, if it hadn't been for some nice person who had seen her racing to the closing door of on of the entrance to the train, she would not have even gotten on the train and she had no idea what she would have done then.  Anyways, the person had seen her and had reached out a hand to both stop the doors from closing completely and to reel her and her trunk safely into the corridor of the train, where she sat on the trunk and breathed heavily for a few seconds, having just run so much and carried a really heavy object.  When she thought that she had regained enough breath to thank whoever this person was, she looked up to do so and found herself staring into the black, black irises of professor Severus Snape, the Potions Master of Hogwarts.


	5. Chapter Five

_Hey, again I am really really sorry about the long wait between the chapters; I got caught up with my schoolwork…hehe!!  Why do we need school anyways?  Sooo boring.  I would much much rather just write this all day.  I hope you like it, we're not quite to the real plot yet but we will be hopefully in the next chapter.  And there are hints of it in this chapter and ins some of the ones before it.  Hope you like it and I would like to give a giant giant thank you to all of the wonderful incredible people who have reviewed and give a giant giant I am so incredibly sorry to those who wanted me to email them when I post a new chapter; my email account can be sort of screwy, so while I can get emails from it, I have big problems when I try to send them, so I wont be able to notify those who asked, really sorry.  Um, I think that's it, and please review cause it really, like, makes my day!!_

            Hermione couldn't say anything for a really long time and it was like she had lost her voice again, like her breath had been taken away.  His eyes were deep and serious, but she could see something lurking in them.

            "Miss Granger; in need of saving yet again, I see?"

            "Prof…Professor Snape, I'm so sorry that you had to do that…I mean, thank you for doing it…I mean, thanks a really lot for making sure that I wouldn't get left behind and that because I'm really not sure what exactly I would do since my father left me and he won't help me and…and…"  The reality of her practical orphanness hit her just then, and Hermione sat back down on the trunk and started to cry.  Soft tears dripped down her cheeks in not so silent rivulets and she sobbed as though the world was ending because for her it was.  True, her parents were hardly model parents, and true, they had barely given her the necessities of life for the past six years, let alone kindness or parental guidance, but they were still her flesh and blood, and they didn't want her.  

            Damn, she managed to be gorgeous even while crying her eyes out.  What?  Huh?  Where had *that* come from?  Severus Snape was at a loss.  He was normally cruel and nasty, but over the past few years had developed a yearning to go soft on this brown haired brown eyed girl and so he had compensated by being really really cruel to her like he had been in the library a couple of days ago.  But in truth, he wanted to do nothing more than reach out and stroke that silky looking hair and bury his face in it and comfort her until she stopped bawling but he knew that that was just not something he could do because he was a nasty mean Death Eater on the outside to the entire world.  The only person who knew himself for who he truly was was Dumbledore; sometimes Severus didn't think even he always knew himself as well as the old man seemed to.  Besides, he was certainly not on this train to gawk at the beautiful Head Girl.  He was here because he was the faculty member best able to protect the Head students from harm.  It wasn't because he was actually wanted to be the Defense against the Dark Arts Proffessor that people said he did; it was because he was highly qualified.  Only the truth was that he loved potions and his world beneath the school; the dungeons, and he wouldn't trade his position, unless it meant he could lay down his burden of being a spy for The Order of the Phoenix.  But he couldn't do that until he was dead.  That thought finally recalled him to the position in which he was now in and he stood and glared down at the sobbing girl.

            "You stupid sobbing girl!" he said.  "Crying is not helping anything.  In fact it will only give you a headache and a really ugly face.  Actually, an uglier face, really."

            Hermione immediately stopped crying in her anger at her teacher.  He was such a bastard sometimes.  She wanted to scream and shout at how incredibly callous he was, but she also didn't want to get in trouble so she ended up just mustering a sneer and then lugging her trunk down the corridor.  She didn't look behind her and she didn't see the Potion Master's face with a little bit of something that might have been sadness on it.  She went into the first compartment that she came across, which was empty since there were not that many people on the train.  She sat in the rather cold compartment for the rest of the train ride, wondering what she was going to do with out her parents and how she was going to take Professor Snape's cruel harshness for the rest of the year.  She couldn't wait until Harry and Ron were there to talk to.  She hadn't realized before now that maybe books weren't the only things that she needed.  Maybe sometimes she really could use her friend's ears to listen to her problems.  Thinking all these things was exhausting and there had always been something about the rythimic train ride to Hogwarts that made her want to sleep, so she indulged her self and curled up into a neat little ball.  Right before she drifted off to sleep, however, she remembered that she should probably change her clothes into her school robes, so with a certain amount of struggling, she got her school robes out of her trunk and struggled into them.  Finally she was able to curl up again and sink into a warm sleep until the train pulled into the station and she would go to her beloved school again.  


End file.
